I'd like to kick start this blog off by asking why has Pique got so much hate for his performances recently. Many people have been criticising his performances for being sloppy and wasteful as well as often just down right poor. I don't think that's fair on Pique or any of his defensive partners in the middle because its has a lot to do with their style of play. Pique is a sweeper in the best sense and he is extremely stylish in the way he does sweep sometimes looking too effortless. People look at football nowadays and base players on the spectacular things that they do.
This is why players like busquets, isla, mandzukic, sanchez, di maria, and higuain have been so often overlooked because what they bring to the table is not easily caught by fans and managers alike. In the season Barcelona bought Alexis Sanchez I was scratching my head on his signing's purpose because I felt the last thing we needed was attacking reinforcement especially a player of the CF role but, I slowly started breaking down his movements and watching him off the ball. He offers 2 things vertical outlets and pressing something you never see on camera unless done by the entire team. Similiar to Pique what you see is hardly seen. His positioning at times is amazing and on par with thiago silva. His tackling and recovery is quite surprising at times for his speed and tall stature.
The following clip is his tackle on Robben on the return leg of the semi-final against Bayern. many people sought to blame him for the 3 goals that let past but we can't be so quick and naive to jdge him by that. In that clip he demonstrated 3 key things
- Speed to Recover
- Read the Danger
- Made the important tackle
It takes a good defender to prevent robben from getting a good shot away and a fast one to catch up to him. I have to say the final tackle was nothing short of sublime to prevent robben's shot from beating valdes. Judging by new tactics and such we have to look at Pique of last year and now and see the tremendous difference.
With tito Barcelona lacked any sort of pressing system and instead reverted to a solid shape when they lost the ball.This was very poor for their system because it constantly meant that the 2 full-backs were useless in defence as they were too far up the pitch to help stabilise the defence. What the end product was, was a easy route to goal only blocked by 2 not so pacy defenders. You might say well Mascherano is great on the ground and Pique is a intelligent sweeper but, it really is difficult as a 2 man shield when your bombarded the entire game by lightning quick attackers hitting you in numbers. 2 v 4 defending is not very easy and a high line doesn't help either. When playing in clasico's against Ronaldo and Di Maria as well as Benzema it's not too comfortable trying to defend 3 unpredictable attackers while trying to manage a entire half full of space.
This picture demonstrates the counterattacking nuisance that pique and mascherano have to deal with. instead of a wingback being caught out you can clearly see mascherano sprawling back to stop Higuain and manages to sucessfully do so but not without him getting into a good shooting position. Also there is a large amount of space behind mascherano and the players in the pictures. The long ball to di maria split the midfield and defence leaving a large gap this means the defence will not get support and the defenders have to defend deep into their own half with little in terms of numbers. The whole team keeps getting caught up in defence.
I'd like to finish off by saying Pique is by no means the best or as good as he used to be but, he is in no way overrated or useless. If you want to see a useless defender please see titus bramble but, even he is not that bad.
